


Adjustments

by cat_77



Category: Prodigal Son (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Blackmail, Genderbending, Threats of Rape/Non-Con
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:28:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26075668
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cat_77/pseuds/cat_77
Summary: Melanie Bright’s life was a mess.  She was slowly learning she did not need to manage that mess on her own.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 20





	Adjustments

**Author's Note:**

> For the "blackmail" entry at hc_bingo.
> 
> * * *

Melanie Bright’s life was a mess. But it was a mess that, like her, somehow managed to drag everything together to get the job done. A serial killer father, an overprotective mother, and a picture-perfect baby brother who always got what he wanted may have played a role in said mess. Whether that role was positive or negative depended upon the day.

Well, the father part usually veered towards the negative, she’d give it that.

She was also pretty damned smart if she said so herself, and needed that confidence to make it in a world that seemed out to get her from the get go. She coped with the stress of that world by trying that much harder, pushing herself that much farther, and taking a ton of drugs. 

Medically approved drugs. 

She always had to tack that part on at the end.

She had PTSD from seeing what her father had been involved in, anxiety from questioning if she should have figured it out earlier, and a whole slew of other pretty sounding diagnoses that she tried to ignore but still kept her up at night and she meant that literally. Her own degree in the field meant that she could argue most under the table on the details of those diagnoses, but it also meant she knew the truth behind it all. She was a mess. Mentally, at least. Physically, she did her best to cover up any signs of anything daring to be wrong, be it with well-tailored clothing or makeup tips that would do a mortician proud for how much damage she could hide. 

Still, she was good at what she did. She read people and the situations they found themselves in. She spotted tells, micro-expressions and fleeting glances and the repeated need to clear one’s throat as lies poured out of their gullet. She was determined to put away as many bad guys as possible, to keep people like her own father off the street, to maybe possibly balance the scales back again so that her entire existence didn’t skew towards failure.

She had just returned from doing her job, from scanning a crime scene to track a killer, and headed towards the desk that she had claimed as her own. She planned on kicking off her sensible flats with appropriate traction for the terrain they had found themselves with, and putting back on the low-heel dress shoes that coordinated with her gray and black pinstriped pantsuit in ways that would do her fashion-conscious mother proud. Just a pop of color, nothing too fancy, and nothing like the towering things said mother preferred that Mel never quite felt nearly as comfortable in. She made a quick detour to the restroom to brush out the half-assed ponytail she had yanked her dark hair back into at the scene – she had tried for a braid that morning but her hands decided shaking was far more fun – and took precisely four steps out before she was cornered.

Well, cornered and dragged. There was a janitor’s closet between the men’s room and the women’s room that was left unlocked half the time and apparently she had timed it just right. Officer Crowton’s greasy face shone in the light from the single bulb as he pressed her up against one of the storage shelves. He leaned in close enough for her to determine what he had eaten for lunch as he breathed more than whispered, “I know who you are, Bright. I know what you are.”

Oh, it was going to be one of those days. 

This should end well.

“What I am?” she questioned with mock confusion. “I’m a consultant serving as a profiler for this precinct. I am a female currently trapped alone in a storage closet alone with a man I am not friendly with who is easily twice my size. I am hoping to move this along as I have a report to write to hopefully help catch a killer.”

He backhanded her, which is more than she thought he’d do, to be honest. He then held her in place with a hand to her throat, the other gripped her leg in less of a sexual way and more in a stopping her from kneeing him in the balls kind of way. She adjusted her internal profile as she assessed he had used light enough force to probably not leave a mark, but she assumed she still might have to redo her lipstick. “You are the child of that stain of an existence Martin Whitly. You slink around in your fancy clothes acting like you are better than us all, but I know the truth. You’re just as rotten as the rest of your family tree.”

“Let me guess, you’re here to teach me a lesson?” she asked drily.

He snorted. “I leave a visible mark on you, and your personal guard dog Arroyo will have my badge. No, we’re going to come to an arrangement, you and me. I keep what I know to myself and you dally about and fool the others for the price of a grand. Well, a grand at a time.”

She pursed her lips and tried not to give anything away. “A grand?” she confirmed. “Monthly?”

“Every two weeks,” he corrected. “Rich girl like you? That’s a drop in the bucket.” And there it was, the hand slid a little higher, thumb trailing from knee to nearly the crease of her thigh. “Of course, maybe that bucket has more than cash in it, if you get my drift?”

He was as subtle as a sledgehammer, so it was hard not to. She did her best not to outwardly squirm and instead asked, “And if I decline your proposition?”

The fingers on her throat tightened just slightly, still probably not quite enough to bruise yet. His bulk was the threat for now, the way he used it to block her exit, but, like he said, he didn’t want to risk his Lieutenant’s wrath for what should be an easy yes. She didn’t agree to his terms and all bets were off. “I tell the squad. I tell your team. Hell, maybe I tell the news agencies and get the city as a whole against the chosen child of one of the worst serial killers to ever grace our pavement.” He licked his lips and the sledgehammer had been replaced by a bulldozer by the time he added, “And maybe I grab something for myself along the way.”

“Your thigh?” she asked demurely.

He blinked, not expecting that. “What?” he questioned.

“Get your hands and your tiny little dick off of me right now, or the only thing you will be grabbing is your thigh when I ram this pen into it,” she elucidated.

His eyes got wide as he spied what she held in her left hand and he slapped it away as he seethed, “You little bitch! You will take what I-”

He had not noticed a similar item in her right hand, which now protruded from his left thigh as promised. He howled and bent down slightly to grab at it. She used the hint of an opening to create a larger one and kneed him first in the balls and then, when he doubled over from that, back up to his chin. She stepped around him easily enough then and walked right out of the closet, the ambient noise of the station enough to cover his lingering complaints as she finally pushed through the doors and made her way back to her desk.

Or at least that was the plan. She was nearly there when he burst into the main office area after her and shouted, “Stop her! She attacked me!” Given the blood on his trousers and his chin from where he must have bit his tongue, it was a fair accusation.

About half the bullpen looked to her while the other looked to the hulking man. She let them make their own conclusions and was fine to go about her merry way, save for the familiar voice of Lieutenant Gil Arroyo and the way he sighed, “Bright? What happened?”

“I’ll tell you what happened!” Crowton cut in. “She stabbed me with a pen! She’s more than you think! Insane, just like that father of hers. You think you know her, but she’s really-”

“Enough!” Gil growled, cutting him off. She could tell from the way his eyes narrowed and his chest heaved a slightly heavier than normal breath that he was already assessing just how to handle the damage control on this one.

Melanie decided to have nothing to do with that. Might as well get everything out in the open, after all. Maybe it would stop idiocy like this from happening again in the future. Doubtful, but worth a try. She raised her hand to call that much more attention to herself from those currently gathered. “Hi! I’m Melanie Bright. This is my legal name. What the good Officer Crowton was about to reveal is that my birth name was Melanie Whitly. Yes, as in Martin Whitly. As in the serial killer known as The Surgeon. Some of you already know this, and know that I changed my name to separate myself from that as I am more than my blood. Why is this important? As it will be revealed in the recording I’m about to play from an incident that just happened in the janitorial closet moments ago.”

Crowton’s eyes grew wide, but it was Gil’s voice that she heard mutter, “Damn it, Bright.”

She pulled her phone from her pocket for all to see, the little red dot showing it was still recording even then. Her mother had criticized her for choosing an Apple Watch over a Rolex, but the ability to take notes at a scene or, as the recent past so showed, any other time, had proved invaluable. Plus, the bio-feedback aspects when she had a panic attack were incredibly useful as well. She stopped the recording and keyed it for playback, raising the volume so that it could be heard by all in the suddenly quiet room.

“I know who you are, Bright. I know what you are,” Crowton’s voice echoed throughout the bullpen. Echoed was the correct term as he tried to talk over the recording, but was stopped by Ellis and Richards and even Keen around the time her own voice mentioned she was trapped in the closet alone with him.

Not long after the recording had ended, he was in cuffs with a medic called to look at his admittedly superficial injuries, and she was seated in Gil’s office, Dani and JT standing protectively at her side. “The fact that you thought to record it, dude,” JT smiled approvingly.

“You really think this is the first time something like this happened?” she snorted indelicately. She caught a rollercoaster of emotions play out against Gil’s face at that declaration, but surely her mentor would have figured that out by now. The fact that JT was suddenly seething next to her was definitely new though. “Usually they stop when I threaten to expose them back. He got handsy. I got annoyed. The only way I was getting out of that closet was to do what I did or to drop to my knees and I was not getting these pants dirty for someone like him.”

Okay, maybe her phrasing could have been better as that was definitely rage she saw now. Multiple expressions thereof.

“We have him for threat of assault and extortion,” Dani cut in. As a fellow female in a male dominated field, Bright had learned she could be the voice of reason in matters pertaining to the correct emotional responses for the bullshit they faced that the males rarely if ever had to put up with.

Gil took a calming breath and ran his hand over his goatee. “Did he lay any hands on you?” he asked.

She was going to deny it, but JT helpfully pointed out the part where she told Crowton to get those hands and his tiny dick off of her and how this implied nonconsensual contact of yet another legal charge type. “He pressed me against the shelves only,” she insisted.

“By what, your throat? You’re beginning to bruise, so try again,” Gil ordered. She paused as she truly hadn’t thought he had squeezed hard enough for that. Maybe one of her new meds upped the contusion factor; she’d have to look out for that.

Dani totally broke the unofficial Girl Code when she tattled, “Your lipstick’s smeared. You use that expensive stuff that doesn’t even rub off on coffee cups; did he try to kiss you or slap you?”

She blinked at that. “I didn’t think he smacked me hard enough for that,” she admitted. Which led to more sighs, a formal report taken in triplicate by someone other than the three people in the room, and a medic to check her over as though she couldn’t withstand that farce of an attack. She was sent home pending investigation, but promised to shoot off the profile from her loft because catching a killer was more important than dealing with some inbred misogyny as far as she was concerned.

Profile delivered, she decided some yoga would help calm her mind enough that maybe she could keep some dinner down later. She was annoyed that the idiot had left a mark. She was annoyed that she was exposed to more people than she felt was strictly necessary without her permission. Some already knew because of little things like her mother visiting and calling her darling and her brother calling her sis in front of them and other subtle things that trained investigators probably shouldn’t miss. It was less of a secret now and more of if they happen to find out so be it, but it was frustrating nonetheless as usually it spurred on another two or three incidents like the one in the closet, or at least open declarations of refusal to work with her which really put a hamper on trying to solve cases.

Pushing all of that out of her mind wasn’t going as well as she hoped and she questioned if dinner should be her mother’s favorite of amber-toned liquid instead while she failed to maintain something as simple as a tree pose. She took slow and deep breaths to try to center herself. She felt the fading sunlight through the windows against her skin and heard the melodic chip of Sunshine in her cage. Almost there, she attempted the pose again, only to damn near topple face-forward when the buzzer sounded to let her know someone was at her door.

It was Dani, so she buzzed her up and left the door cracked open while she rolled up her mat, yoga simply not meant to be that evening. She turned when she heard the door snick shut to see the woman she tentatively called friend smirk. “You own something other than thousand-dollar dresses and power suits?” she teased.

Bright looked down at her leggings and flowing tank and shrugged. “It’s hard to do a kapotasana in linen and wool,” she admitted.

“I don’t know what that is, but I’ll take your word for it,” Dani grinned. She kicked off her shoes to join Bright in being barefoot on the hardwood and held up the paper bag in her hands. “Want to eat our weight in carbs and ice cream and lament on the stupidity of man? Edrisa has a whole treatise if you want to invite her.”

Which is how Melanie Bright found herself curled up on her couch, more full of pasta than she truly should be given her stomach’s usual take on food, eating directly from a pint of Phish Food while Dani and Edrisa regaled her with tales of their own takedowns over the years. Edrisa brought a bottle of something that was an even worse idea than the pasta and Dani took her phone away from her around the fifth time her father tried to call. They didn’t get too smashed as they all had work the next morning, her included as the recording pretty much put the kibosh on anything more drawn out. Melanie would have questioned the Girl’s Night at all save for the promise that Gil and JT were fighting for a warrant to go look at the warehouse she had suspected was a cover for their murderer anyway and likely wouldn’t get it until the next day.

The following morning, she walked into work with the expectation of glares and glowers. Instead, she found a few polite nods and even a handful of smiles. She got to her desk to find a box of her favorite tea and a pack of Twizzlers waiting for her with a scribbled note attached that said simply, “Not on our watch.”

Perhaps it was time to adjust her profile.


End file.
